Pop Art Emoji

The 1960s was our focus in Primary 3 for social studies but it would be impossible to understand the decade without its art - and, as a focus for our art lessons, the theme was full of interesting art concepts, techniques, and influential artists.

Tate Kids has a great video to help children understand the Pop Art movement, while this CBBC video introduces the ideas of Andy Warhol. We thought about how Pop Art reflects changes during the 1960s and represents popular culture. We then created Warhol-style prints which represent something from our own culture - emoji. The idea came from this blog.

We practised drawing our emoji before pressing it into a Styrofoam piece (one quarter of A4). I checked each stamp to make sure the lines had been pressed in deeply enough. For the next step, we divided A4 paper into quarters and used bright colours for the background. The printing was done with normal black tempera paint. The hardest part was getting not too much and not too little paint, then pressing down well enough (especially given the painted texture of the background). Once they had completed their picture, most continued printing and printing and printing...